


Ritual

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Historical References, Light Angst, Multilingual Character, One Shot, Pillow Talk, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24510526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Originally for a Tumblr prompt on "ritual," this became long enough that I decided to cross-post it here. Garcia Flynn and Lucy Preston discuss futures they may not have.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Comments: 16
Kudos: 55





	Ritual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrairiePirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairiePirate/gifts).



It starts after they get back from the Rabotnitsa mission. Lucy’s teeth still ache and her ears still ring, and she wasn’t the one who jumped through a window. Something about Flynn’s breathing makes her think that he’s trying not to groan aloud. 

(They have been sharing the narrow bed in the narrow room almost since Chinatown. At first, he had taken the couch. After two weeks, she told him not to be ridiculous. They had stayed up late, nodding over piles of books. She had bitten back the question _Are you all right?_ four times, and then stopped counting. “I should…” she had begun, and been cut off by his “Stay.” And in the ringing, dreadful silence she had realized that if she slept alone, next to the Lifeboat, he would not have assurance that she was safe. So Lucy had nodded, and learned how to fit between the steel of the wall and the curve of his arm.)

So here they are, with Flynn’s heartbeat under her ear and his muscles still tense. “It’s hard,” says Lucy softly.

“Hmm?”

“To imagine what comes after.”

“Yes.”

Lucy swallows, and forces herself to breathe deeply before replying (he must not hear in her voice that she fears for him, that she aches for him though she has no right to do so, and that this is almost worse than thinking about her mother’s empty house.) “It’s one of the things I challenge my students to do,” she says. “To imagine what comes after they sit through Colonial and Revolutionary America. What do they want to have discovered? What do they want to do with that knowledge?”

Flynn hums softly; she hopes she’s right in thinking that he also relaxes slightly. “Have I mentioned recently that you’re a genius?”

“Thank you. I know it sounds cheesy,” says Lucy, “but I think we should do the same thing. Imagine what comes after. One thing we want — how does that sound?”

The silence is too long, this time. Unambiguous is the quickening of his pulse, the tight control he keeps over his breath. But: “All right,” says Flynn at last.

“Coffee,” says Lucy promptly. “I want coffee at my favorite coffee shop. I like yours,” she adds quickly. “And it’s far better than coffee made in an ancient drip machine from underground water has any right to be. But I want stupid latte art and stupid flavored lattes, specifically the seasonal one that has carrot and turmeric in it. There. Your turn.”

He takes a deep breath, and she has time to fear his answer. The unspoken rule is, of course, no families. She hadn’t mentioned Amy. But still.

“The Ash Wednesday service,” says Flynn at last.

“What?”

“The Ash Wednesday service,” he says, more steadily. “In my own language. I repent, my God, of all my sins, and my heart cries out, for I have grieved thee. But greater is thy mercy than my transgressions.”

Lucy tells herself that she should find words. And then she thinks that perhaps there are none. She covers his hand with her own, and like that, they fall asleep.

* * *

After the Titanic, she asks it still shivering. “Tell me what you want after this.”

He looks at her for a long moment, and then says: “Mountains. To hike up into the mountains, and to see the sea spread out below.”

“I want,” says Lucy, “to go out on the bay. Mom always scoffed at it. But I would like to go out on the water. It’s the opposite of being shut in, isn’t it? I’d like to be out on the bay at sunset.” She nudges him with her shoulder. “Close enough to land to swim back in an emergency.”

“And no icebergs,” observes Flynn, with perfect gravity; and she leans up, and kisses him.

* * *

“Lucy,” says Flynn after Antietam, “what do you want after this?”

 _For you never to get blown up ever again_. Lucy takes a deep breath. “I think I would like,” she says, “to do a tour of some of the battlefields. Pennsylvania, Virginia, diner food, tourist tat, photos to use in my lecture slides… We could go in autumn, and do apple-picking at the same time. And I’ve never seen the leaves change properly. Typical Californian.” She realizes only belatedly that she has said _we_ , has presumed he’ll be with her.

“That sounds nice,” says Flynn quietly.

He is silent for long enough that she says: “Your turn.”

“Music.”

“Music?”

“In a club. Not — not a modern club, but a place with good jazz, good whisky. That would be nice.”

“Yes,” agrees Lucy.

* * *

“I want,” says Lucy, after the 1910 mission, “for you to take me dancing.”

Lightly he kisses her hair. “Is it against the rules to wish for the same thing?”

“Mm, I think so.”

“May I wish to take you for dinner beforehand?”

“You may.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

She is lying on top of him, after Hanoi in 1955. “I want you to stay,” says Lucy. “I don’t care if I’m breaking the rules. I want you to stay. I want to go on bike rides with you, and I want you to laugh at my cooking, and I want…” She breaks off. She clutches his shirt with both hands, and allows herself to cry into it.

“Yes,” says Flynn simply. “Shall we have a tandem bicycle?”

She chokes on her laughter. “You don’t really want that. I’m not nearly coordinated enough. We’d fall over.”

“In that case,” says Flynn gravely, “I say only that I would like to try it once.”

“On your own head be it,” says Lucy, and he kisses her, and they speak no more that night.

* * *

“Two kids,” says Lucy, after they go to Savannah, in 1859. “Or three. I want to read them _Winnie the Pooh_ and history books and _Anne of Green Gables_. Two kids. Or three.”

Flynn’s free hand finds its way into her hair. She can feel his breath quickening beneath her. “Fairy tales,” he says, “in all the languages I know. _Živjeli su sretno do kraja života_.”

“I hope that’s Croatian for ‘And they lived happily ever after.’”

“It means more than that,” says Flynn. “It means that they lived well.”

Lucy reaches for him in the dark. “Say it again,” she demands; and he does.

**Author's Note:**

> My version of the Antietam mission is found in "Affairs After a Battle."


End file.
